


pine trees and loneliness

by hannieks



Series: klance oneshots [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), i'm sorry he pines so much, if you know what i mean, there's angst but mostly just keith angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 13:39:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannieks/pseuds/hannieks
Summary: Keith has spent nineteen years as a loner. He always has been - until they find the Blue Lion, at least.And when he discovers his affection for a certain gorgeous sharpshooter, he’s terrified to speak up and confess.He doesn't want to be alone again.





	pine trees and loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> i'm pretty tired, and after i read a solid 400 pages of thriller in one sitting i decided to write 3k of klance.  
> no, i don't know why, either. 
> 
> as usual, if you spot any mistakes, don't be afraid to tell me!
> 
> tiny tiny trigger warning for self harm. literally, it's one sentence, and doesn't affect the plot at all. stay safe, and please don't read if you know it'll affect you. there's a bold star just before the sentence. 
> 
> i listened to satellites by beyoncé on repeat writing this, so listen if you’re looking for mood music! 
> 
> enjoy! x

Keith's mind, he's been told on multiple occasions, works in a unique way.

He can't identify emotion beyond the simple few. He can't understand the meanings behind words that everyone else seems to get, and sometimes his only friend is his _brother_ , of all people. 

It's sad really, that he doesn't know how to love anything except his Marmora blade and cold, hard fact.

Keith loves his knife. He doesn't even know why he acquired it, only that one day he lived at home with his mother and the next she was gone, his only companion in the desert a luxite blade that glowed an eerie violet.

( _"Mom? Where are you going?"_

_Keith peers around the corner, where one of his two role models stuffs a bag with alien-looking items that lie waiting on her bed._

_She smiles at him, soft and sad, passes him the knife with calloused hands. The last time he’ll ever feel touch so loving, the last time he’ll ever feel safe._

_So young, he can't grasp the feeling it evokes in him, but he later realises it feels more like home than the shack can ever hope to be._

_"I'm going somewhere they can't find me."_

_She finishes packing her things and checks a device from her pocket, one that’s more advanced than anything Keith will see for the next nine years, before she hugs him._

_“You’re stronger than you think.”_

_In a cloud of purple dust, there’s nothing but Keith and the desert.)_

That was the day he shattered his mirror, too, perhaps alongside his sanity. He'd gripped his knife in slim hands and made the mistake of looking himself in the eyes.

His familiar grey eyes were a thing of the past, replaced by indigo that matched the purple hue of the weight in his hands. Streaks of dark hair lit up in violet, lips streaked with the awful colour, saturated in it to the nth degree.

He'd dropped the knife, cut his hands in his haste to obliterate the glass. Keith didn't notice the wounds until afterwards, after she’d gone. 

The next few hours saw an eleven year old boy tear through his home like a possessed tornado, ridding the shack of everything even vaguely purple. Keith learned that it was her favourite colour, and screamed at the items that lay shredded before him, stained with dust and tears.

His father came back a short while after that, found him sobbing in front of their few possessions.

He half expected the lone parent he had remaining to console him, to assure him everything would be fine.

All his father did was stare.

\---

So, all things considered, it's not difficult to understand his situation. Keith doesn't think that his mind is complicated - his thoughts are straightforward, why shouldn't he be?

(Whether he's straight or not is a question he's yet to answer. After some deliberation whilst watching space drift by, alone, he decides intergalactic war comes first.)

He hopes that his body language and harsh words isn't enough to ward off others. He's seen it in movies, in television, in books, seen love interests push past those barriers and find the love within.

Keith remains alone.

\---

Surprisingly, it's not until a while after he's catapulted into the vast depths of space that he first feels an inkling of belonging.

He has a purpose. No longer is he just the depressed, paranoid teenager who asks too many questions and prefers to punch anyone who denies him answers.

Present Keith is a hero. He's a defender of freedom, of life itself, a symbol of strength. He has to watch how he acts now - because the resulting shockwave of a bad act will affect the coalition the others are so desperate to keep afloat.

The thought both thrills and terrifies him.

\---

It comes as an even bigger shock when he finds solace in Lance.

It’s unspoken between the pair, but their so-called rivalry is gone, alongside the tension that had built between them. In its place stands a tentative but solid friendship.

He depends on it, knows it's unhealthy to do so but lacks the strength to stop.

It's better to have a friend in the boy he finds more gorgeous than any other star in the skies, than to have him hate his very existence.

 ***** If he had to deal with that rival facade a month longer, the scars on his thighs would have to wait a while longer to fade.

\---

One night, a few weeks after they stop arguing, Lance officially declares their ‘competition’ as over, because Lance is the human embodiment of unnecessary drama. 

"You're sure?"

"Positive, my dude."

Lance grins at Hunk and Pidge as they stand with dubious pride beside him, and it’s the smile that sets the whole room aglow. 

Keith goes to bed pretending that  his heart isn't swimming in butterflies, and for the first time in months, he dreams. 

\---

Under the blanket of slumber, his thin sheets are nowhere to be felt. The atmosphere he's come to name as alien is gone, replaced only with warmth.

He lies comfortable in the bed his mind imagines as Lance's, in a room decorated with space figurines, Star Trek posters, everything he knows Lance to be.

A Cuban flag pokes out of a dresser in the corner, just another burst of colour in the rainbow of blue and red that is his bedroom.

"Hey."

Lance joins him under the warm bedcovers, kisses him on the cheek. He feels his face flush hot, and Lance chuckles, voice thick with sleep.

The sound makes Keith's stomach burst with warmth, and he goes impossibly pinker.

Thankfully, Lance chooses to ignore the positively smitten expression he must have on his face, changing the subject. He can’t even begin to hope he didn’t notice. Lance is perceptive, more than anyone - nothing escapes his sharp gaze.

Keith knows that yet another thing has been revealed, but he doesn't mind. He'd do anything to watch a small firework of confidence explode in those blue eyes, and his dreams are no exception from this. 

And it’s listening to Lance ramble that he realises he’s in a figment of imagination, that his reality isn’t this, that he’s actually sleeping fitfully in an alien bed, a war weighing heavy on his shoulders. 

"There's pancakes downstairs. You want some?"

Keith nods, even as he curls up into Lance's arms, shoves his face into his neck like a man deprived of water for a week and then thrown into a freshwater lake. It’s a dream, he knows it’s a dream, but it’s so close he can convince himself this is the truth, even if its only for a few moments longer. 

"The pancakes can wait." Lance decides, a smile in his voice, and he only hums in reply, perfectly content.

He can believe just a few seconds more that the quiet noises from a few rooms away is Lance’s mother cooking breakfast, not the unmistakeable roar of a battle he’ll need to join soon.

Now, though, he’ll stay warm in Lance’s arms.  

\---

The dreams continue, every night. They never have the same plot - sometimes they’re fighting, sometimes they’re fucking, sometimes they’re figuring out another battle plan - but it’s always Lance. 

—-

Several weeks since the dreams became regular, Keith awakens with an unnatural jolt.

Alarms blare in his bedroom, the typical distress signal, but it lacks the intensity of a real alert. He thanks Zarkon for letting him have at least some semblance of a lie in, then mentally slaps himself upside the head. 

For all he knows, the princess could have some telepathic chip in his translator that read that thought, and be convinced that he's actually working for the Galra again.

 _Calm down_ , sighs rational thought. His paranoia flips them off.  

"Get to the control deck!"

Keith’s half asleep instincts are correct. Allura's voice doesn't have the determination and urgency that it takes on when they're actually under attack, so he’s safe. For now. 

He takes liberty of this and decides to stay under the covers for a few more minutes, the warm feeling in his heart remaining.

He searches his brain for something to call it, and it offers up the word he dreads most of all.

Love. 

 _Oh_ , he thinks, and grabs his knife from under his pillow, out of his door half a minute later. 

\---

He wasn't panicking before, when he'd silently acknowledged his love for his teammate and possible friend, but he certainly is now that the Princess has released them from the debrief.

How will he live like this? Go through the motions and ignore his adoration? Confess and ruin the team dynamic?

There's no conclusive, certain answers. The only person he wants to share this with is his mother, but he's sure that she's dead. It's the only reason he can come up with, that she was on the run and left him to rot in that shack.

It has to be.

His mind is a spiralling mess, and to the ever observing Lance, he sticks out like Lotor in a sea of attractive people.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Him. The boy he loves, the boy who has no clue that the one he stands beside is absolutely besotted with every thought of him, every square inch of him that exists, every smile that graces his face.

_I love you._

It's almost too easy to say, too easy to blurt out in casual conversation, too easy to drop the ball and spill every secret he has about the world.

"I'm fine."

He hopes Lance doesn't realise the strange tone Keith's voice holds is one of a schoolgirl talking to her crush.

\---

Love does the strangest things, Keith discovers.

He finds himself out of his room for more than just training and meals; suddenly he's learning Altean so that he can navigate the servers and change the language to Common, he's sitting through ancient recordings of diplomatic meetings and trying to read the glances that pass between the late king and his wife, just so that he can be that little bit better at social skills.

He stumbles his way through the tech, finds the closest equivalent to a search engine, and asks what the hell a cheer chant is.

\---

Keith's room is too quiet. He hears nothing but every syllable Lance said to him today, sees nothing but his ethereal smile every time his eyes close.

So he does what he's best at, and moves. Keith wanders the Castle for somewhere to quiet the thrum of energy rushing through his blood, the kind that the training deck won’t help with. 

He has no destination in mind, Lance taking up far too much space, but eventually he finds himself standing in a familiar room.

"Anyone there?" He calls, a deafening whisper in the silence of space. 

The holodeck seems void of occupants, so he makes his way down and trips over the last person he wanted to see, dressed in an oversized bomber jacket and jeans.

Lance.

( _Shiro called him obsessed, told him that if he doesn't confess before the week is up he'll trap them both on a planet without their lions to save them. Allura is involved too, he's sure, because now she forces them together at any opportunity._

_He’d protested Shiro’s statement, of course. "My lion will save me."_

_"No," he’d replied, voice stronger than a kiloton of steel, "Red knows what's best for you."_ )

It plays through his head on repeat as they topple to the floor in a mixed pile of teenager and Keith's mortified embarrassment.

Fire and ice only make steam. They’ll fizzle out before the day is over. 

(The idea of nothingness makes nausea crawl into his gut. If he loses Lance, then there's no real reason for his existence.

There are too many lives that depend on his strength for him to break now.)

His original plan was to confess tonight, to find Lance and tell him that every time he walks into a room, his heart skips a beat and then a couple more. Tell him that life was worthless without his laugh, his smile, his jokes. Beg him to just listen, that he didn't have to accept him but could they at least stay friends?

But on the holodeck, entangled with long legs he'd dreamed about and inches away from lips he fantasised about tasting, his courage leaves him like a startled cat.

They separate, to his joint relief and disappointment, and sit side by side on the steps leading up to the control panel.

The awkward silence stretches out into the blackness of space, the glitter of the galaxy they drift through. He doesn't know if he should speak, never learned about this sort of contact, but Lance beats him to it.

It's fitting, really. Keith was never one to talk first, even while their rivalry was still in place. 

He hears the quiet intake of breath, tenses. Waits for the words he's almost certain he'll hear; _I know how you feel about me, I never want to see you again._

"I hated you because I wanted to be you."

That wasn't what he was expecting. His mind takes a second to reboot before he can reply, replays the moment over and over just to make sure it happened.

"What?"

There's a short pause. Keith takes the time to collect himself a small bit, still reeling from his last comment, so offhand it worries him.

Who would want to be him, his only skills instinct and piloting?

He's dust compared to Lance, who dashes through life while still stopping to smell the roses, saves one of them to give to the next pretty girl he passes, works hard for grades he deserves, struggles with flying yet perseveres with a angry determination like no one else can.

He's everything, and if Keith had to give up his life for him, he wouldn't hesitate.

He looks over then, sees the panic flooding gorgeous blue eyes, feels the dread in his stomach that tells him the moment is over.

Keith has fucked up somehow, in one way or another, but every runthrough of the last minute doesn't seem to ring any _Keith made yet another mistake! bells._

Lance's voice, barely above a whisper and void of the snarky wit of his usual tone, is deafening.

"I have to go."

Okay, even he knows that conversation was like watching an oak table slowly fall down some stairs, but Keith lets him leave. Watches the stars pass by him, until the castle lights announce it's morning.

\---

"It's the last day." He hears after lunch, and sighs at the sight of Shiro, brows furrowed in the way that says he will follow through with the threat he'd made on Monday.

"I know."

\---

He knows he freezes up when it comes to words, so he writes down his speech onto a strangely blue piece of paper and sits on the holodeck, half a varga after the castle bid their goodnights.  
It's always better to practise important things, and this speech is no exception.

But of course, he loses it. Like the stupid, love struck, dumbass anime girl protagonist he seems to be, he drops his love letter down some invisible drain as he’s on his way to his lion for some pre-confession conversation, startled by a particularly loud creak from the ship.

He takes it as a sign. The universe is cruel, but it is fair, and if Lance wasn’t meant for him then it’s not going to happen.

That night, he sits on the holodeck, thinks of ways to convince Shiro not to kill him the next morning, staring out at the stars. 

He spends another few ticks gazing over the stars, before he stands, set to walk back to the bedrooms.

And nearly falls right back down ono the floor, mercifully saved from that embarrassment but still unsteady on his feet. 

Lance is before him, cobalt blue eyes wide, hair sticking up every which way, cheeks glistening with tears, still everything he wants in one image despite his appearance. He’s clutching something in his hands, and on closer observation he sees the letter  

Oh no. Oh _shit._

Keith prioritises Lance over himself, over everything, so it's no shock when he puts aside his mortification, the horrible feeling that seeps into him and consumes him completely. He’s been crying, and that could mean upset or a bruise or _god forbid_ a broken bone- 

He rushes towards Lance, eight quick steps that do nothing but increase his worry as he approaches.

"What's wrong?" Keith rambles. "A-Are you hurt? Do you need a healing-"

"I'm fine." He says, but his voice cracks halfway through. He's smiling a small smile that lightens the knots of dread in his stomach, and Keith relaxes slightly.

He doesn’t look distressed, but Keith has been known to be disastrously bad at reading emotions. Maybe knowing more will help? 

"Then what’s up?"

His mind spins with every possible disaster he can invent, as the silence becomes uncomfortable.

"I told Shiro I was in love, today.”

Keith didn’t think his heart wa able to shatter like this.

Unknowingly, Lance rambles on. “Wasn’t planned out or anything, the mice just brought me this,” he holds up the letter, “and I figured out my feelings pretty quickly.”

Lance's smile grows wider then, so alluring Keith almost forgets his own name.

”Wanted to get my blessing, y’know?”

Oh. Oh shit. Keith wants little more than to kiss him, or cry, so much so he almost misses the meaning of Lance's words.

”Keith?” his smile cracks slightly, and he manages a small nod. 

When he reboots his brain again, it having crashed when he’d seen Lance _literally winking at him_ , he's left even more confused. Lance has never flirted with any guys, so how...?

”Did I break you?”

His intellect takes front seat, because he’s completely blanked. Keith runs through everything Lance has said to girls, if he's said it to any guys, relays it back to their few conversations, because this could all be a joke and if he’s going to be humiliated he at least wants to know- 

(The name's Lance.)

Every action they’ve ever shared. When he offered a hand to help him up and Lance just held it, as if they’d held hands many time before. 

Every yell of praise mid battle, every embrace after a particularly hard mission, every time Lance blames his reddened cheeks on the heat of the planet, usually spluttered after Keith takes his shirt off or fights well. 

( _The name’s Lance_.)

His least used line, always on those he particularly has a liking for. The first non-insult words he’d spoken to Keith, was goddamn _flirting_. 

The thought brings back so much, almost too much, but the realisation that it's him that Lance was so in love with, enough to cry, fixes it all. He thanks his intellect, but all it does is step down again and let his instinct take control, business as usual.

"Me?" Keith is soft, void of the bite his words typically carry.

He only nods, and that's the only warning either of them get before they kiss, simple and sweet even as fireworks explode in his mind, nebulas behind his eyes.

Lance's lips taste like cinnamon and home.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaa i probably didn’t get keith’s character right, but he’s pretty oblivious when it comes to matters of the heart... 
> 
> i hope you enjoyed the read! if so, you can leave some feedback, which would be awesome, thanks
> 
> check me out on twitter @samuraiklance
> 
> until next time, reader.


End file.
